Transportation Proposal: Restoring Sanity to Minnesota’s Commuter Routes

Common Sense Commuter Routes
Rocco for State Senate — SD 65

Democrats have made Minnesota the nation’s showcase for bike paths. That choice serves a small group of daily riders. It slows the majority of Minnesotans who drive to work, school, and family.

For years, state and city policy has made driving harder on purpose: fewer car lanes, more bike lanes, longer construction, and finished projects that leave traffic worse than before.

Hennepin Avenue
Three lanes of traffic were closed for five years. When the street reopened, drivers had two lanes. Each direction got a full bike lane. The majority of travelers lost capacity so a minority route could be expanded.

Highway 36
Years of reconstruction and a complete bridge replacement were an opening to add a third lane in each direction through a known bottleneck. Decision-makers kept two lanes.

Highway 52 and the Lafayette Bridge
The Lafayette Bridge was replaced. Traffic after the project is worse than traffic before it. Commuters in Saint Paul, West Saint Paul, and the East Side pay that cost every day.

The 94 West / 35E North ramp
The entrance to 94 West and 35E North is routed into a 20 mph zone through a 270-degree turn. Traffic backs up toward Butler. That design is not an accident of geography. It is a traffic-management failure.

Most vehicles using that ramp are going to 35E North. The current layout treats that fact as optional.

The plan
As State Senator for District 65, Rocco will introduce legislation for an added lane serving that movement. Two engineering options:

1. Acquire right-of-way by eminent domain in the area north of Highway 94 West; or
2. Build an elevated ramp over Lafayette Road that turns north and meets 35E North at Cayuga Street.

The point is simple: separate the 35E North movement from the 20 mph hairpin onto 94 West so the main flow of traffic is not forced through a crawl.

Why this belongs in the Senate
District 65 sits on the Lafayette / 52 / 94 / 35E knot. Residents of Saint Paul and West Saint Paul do not need another study that ends in fewer car lanes. They need capacity where cars actually go.

Rocco’s other transportation positions are the same principle:

• Stop cutting driving lanes to add bike lanes as a default.
• Finish reconstruction by adding lanes at known bottlenecks, not locking in two-lane chokepoints.
• Spend transportation money on movement, not pet projects.
• Reject the idea that questioning bike-lane conversions is something to be ashamed of.
• Stop mindlessly funding mass transit through Light Rail which is more often than not used as an escape route for criminals stealing from Midway Target than honest hard working tax payers, only protected by “transit Authority” workers and not real officers.

This is not a war on bicycles. It is a refusal to punish the majority of commuters to satisfy a planning fashion.

What “common sense” means here
If most of the traffic on a ramp is headed to 35E North, build a path to 35E North. If a bridge replacement makes congestion worse, the project failed. If a five-year closure ends with fewer car lanes, the public was not the priority.

Rocco is running for State Senate in SD 65 on affordability, ending fraud, restoring Minnesota’s historic flag, protecting women’s sports, supporting law enforcement, and putting commuters back into transportation decisions.

The Lafayette fix is one bill. The standard behind it is the campaign: government should make daily life work, not lecture people who drive.

Stop voting for the same people who got us in this mess in the first place.

Stop voting BLUE no matter who. Vote RED instead, and together we can make a better tomorrow.